Re: P2 & P3 dual-CPU?

M.Brands (shrike@il.fontys.nl)
Thu, 29 Jul 1999 01:53:13 +0200


On Wed, Jul 28, 1999 at 03:23:10PM -0700, Iain McClatchie allegedly wrote:
>
> I have an ASUS P2B-D motherboard with a single PII/450. I'd like to
> upgrade to two CPUs.
>
> Intel has very cleverly discontinued the PII/450, leaving me with the
> following options:
>
> 1) installing a PII/400. I assume that the 4x frequency multiple is
> hard-coded onto the processor cartridge somehow. Has anyone tried
> running two CPUs at two different speeds in the same box
> simultaneously?

I've got an Abit BP6 with two Celeron 333A's running at 480 MHz on it.
(96 MHz busfreq x 5) I've still got a Celeron 300A around, so I'll
give it a try with a C300 and a C333.

I'll mail the results. I'm rather curious myself.

> 2) installing a PIII/450. I doubt there is any electrical compatibility
> problem, but I wonder if there is some trick to getting Linux to
> treat the PIII as a PII (i.e. it would be really bad if the kernel
> tried to enable MMX on both CPUs). Has anyone tried running two
> different model CPUs in the same box simultaneously?

I doubt this is going to work...

> 3) Throw out/sell the PII and install two PIIIs. This option seems
> somewhat unappetizing.

Would be your best (and most expensive) option.

> I know there used to be problems running different revisions of the
> Pentium Pro together. Does anyone know what these problems were, and
> whether I would experience similar or worse difficulties with a PII/PIII
> mix?

I've got a dual-pentium that uses cpu's with different spec numbers. NT
won't run on it, but Linux is very happy (and stable) and on it.

Mathijs

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